Guild Wars 2

How do i use skills easily?

I use my left hand on the wasd keys to strafe, and I use my right hand on the mouse to drag/rotate the camera. It’s very hard for me to press the 1-9 keys during a battle without stopping to move.

Should I use macros? rebinding the 1-9 keys to “r,f,v,t,g,b,y,h,n” is kind okittenward as well.

Mine are set up for 1,2,3,4,5,e,q,r,z,9.

Here’s a great guide for setting up your keybinds:

http://taugrim.com/2012/06/27/guide-to-guild-wars-2-keybinds/

Sometimes i wonder if ANet have deliberately designed the UX to be awkward, either to up the “difficulty” or to give people a greater sense of “achievement”. Hell they even moved some weapon skills around on the Guardian after launch, because people could hit 234 to get a field+finisher off. Given that i am surprised that they allow us to rebind at all.

Anyways:

1=1
2=2
3=3
q=4
e=5
r=6
z=7
x=8
c=9
alt+e=0
alt+1=f1
alt+2=f2
alt+3=f3
alt+4=f4

is my current idiosyncratic setup.

Works fine as long as i remember to let go of alt before hitting tab

I bought a groovy mouse. Its has lots of buttons

1-5 I just kept bound and put 6 to q and 7 to e to keep things simple. I tried binding 1 to mouse as well for “nades” on my engie, but I could never quite get the hang of it.

I use 1-6 for weapon skills/heal. Shift3-5 for utilities. and Mouse 3 for Elite

F1-4 for profession skills

Naga HEX was my salvation on that. Right hand does almost all the moving, left hand hits the keys.

I had the same problem until recently. I just bought a Logitech G600 gaming mouse. It has 12 buttons on the side that I have bound to my weapons and skills.

It also has a third mouse button used as a “shift” key so you can shift click those 12 buttons for a whole new set of binds … More than enough options for GW2.

It took me a few hours of playing to get used to it, but now the muscle memory is building the clicks all come naturally. My game has improved ten fold.

I Play on the Xbox360 Controller.

((Right analog Stick)) = Camera
((Left analog Stick)) = WASD movement
((Right Bumper)) = Dodge

(A) Skill1
(X) Skill2
(Y) Skill3
(B) Skill4
Right Trigger: Skill5

((Left Bumper)) while held down, (A) Skill6
((Left Bumper)) while held down, (X) Skill7
((Left Bumper)) while held down, (Y) Skill8
((Left Bumper)) while held down, (B) Skill9
((Left Bumper)) while held down, (Right Trigger) Skill0

(Left D-pad) = F1
(Up D-Pad) = F2
(Right D-Pad) = F3
(Down D-Pad) = F4

((Left Trigger)) while held down, (X) = Target Enemy
((Left Trigger)) while held down, (Y) = Swap Weapons
((Left Trigger)) while held down, (B) = Cancel

MachineManXX.9746:

I had the same problem until recently. I just bought a Logitech G600 gaming mouse. It has 12 buttons on the side that I have bound to my weapons and skills.

It also has a third mouse button used as a “shift” key so you can shift click those 12 buttons for a whole new set of binds … More than enough options for GW2.

It took me a few hours of playing to get used to it, but now the muscle memory is building the clicks all come naturally. My game has improved ten fold.

I use this mouse also. It makes playing so much easier, especially my ele who uses attunement swaps often. It has definitely improved my gameplay, and I recommend this to anyone who finds pressing buttons awkward. It takes a day or two to get used to, but the result is awesome.

Buy a gaming mouse.

I recommend the Razer Naga. You should atleast look it up!

Much easier than keybinds.

I have replaced 6-9 with E, R, T, Y and the elite with G. F1 is replaced with Q.

Works well enough, except that G is awfully close to H and sometimes I end up flickering the character menu on and off, lol.

I have my #1 attack bound to E which allows me to constantly use the skill whilst maintaining full control over my movement.
#2,#3,#4,#5 are default.
My healing skill #6 is bound to Q.

1. = X
2. = C
3. = V
4. = Ctrl
   Dodge = Shift.
   WASD = forwards, strafe left, down, straight right respectively.
   Left and right arrow keys for the cases when I want to turn without moving from my position at all.
   As a PvE warrior I don’t need to worry about F1,2,3,4 so they’re default.
   Swap weapons is one of the two side buttons on my mouse.

I find this set-up allows my fingers to constantly dance between WASD and all the keys I need to press.

We can assign our skills (1 to 9, etc.) to the left part of the keyboard for the left hand to activate. But then it’s harder to move in any direction we want and press a skill button at the same time. While we are pressing the fifth skill, we can’t press d the same time (and move right).

So what I did was that I assigned all my skills, swap weapons, healing to the number pad on the right part of the keyboard. So I can use my left hand to move and at the same time, use my right hand to handle skills. However, the only problem is that I have to let go of my skill buttons when using the mouse (targeting a player/mob or selecting a location for an AOE). Everything has its’ drawbacks I suppose.

If you want to give me any feedback, please post.

Edit: Gaming mouse isn’t a bad idea.

My own twopennyworthL-

I use a naga razer mouse with strafe and fwd buttons bound to the thumb-pad. (no backpedal at all) Dodge is on the middle button.
That puts all movement control on the right hand and the left is free for skills. (apart from jump which I left on the spacebar – it just feels so natural to hit that with the left thumb)

The skills are bound so that I never need to move my left hand from a fixed position (I have a bit of rough stickytape on the key under my index finger so that I can feel I haven’t accidentally moved position)

Those that use the “QWERTY” keys for skills…what do you use for movement keys?